Made to Stray
Transcription
Made to Stray
MADETOSTRAY MADETOSTRAY BA (HONS) PHOTOGRAPHIC ART 2015 Calumn Newman [398] - C e r r y s Wa k e f i e l d [ 7 3 1 ] - E l l i e P a r i s [ 2 1 2 ] E l i z a b e t h F r a s e r [ 8 7 2 ] - G e o r g i a Ta y l o r [ 2 3 8 ] - H e l e n W i l l i a m s [ 3 9 3 ] J a c k We e k e s [ 0 0 0 ] - J o d i e E v e r e t t [ 9 9 6 ] - K a t i e L i o n h e a r t Kerr y Lorne [771] - Louise Upham [290] - Łukasz Kubicki [748] [813] R e b e c c a P a r k e r [ 7 9 4 ] - S a r a h O l e k s i k [ 4 0 0 ] - Wa t l i n g a n d F o s t e r [ 6 1 9 ] Utilising a photocopier, binding machine, rubber-stamp, and various pre-printed components, Made to Stray was constructed in situ during the 2015 Graduate Show at the University of South Wales. All 500 books in the edition were assembled between 27th May and 5th June. Instead of hiding the construction of the book from public view, Made to Stray celebrated each book’s unique fabrication by presenting four distinct production areas; printing, collation, binding and distribution. The removal of standardised pagination from the overall design allowed for the book to be ordered in a multitude of ways at the request of each purchaser. As a result, each copy to leave the production line was individually numbered between 1 and 500. The emerging artists featured in this publication also commissioned a beautiful and thoughtful story by Rebecca Parker, who devised the piece in response to an introductory Skype meeting with the group. He l e n Wil l ia m s R a nd om A c c e ss M em or y Humanity is partially defined through our experiences; where we go, who we see, what we read. Our memories shape and mould us into who we are, a line of images and experiences leading us through our entire lives. We are all unreliable narrators, our histories cannot be trusted, no memory is safe from the degradation of time. In years past, our experiences were often recorded on film and shown to us as projected images, thrown onto walls and screens by light, children and family members watching picture after picture of someone else’s experiences of distant places. Although these were real places, the audience had never experienced them as anything other than photons pulsing through a plastic square. In the modern world, video games evoke this with pulsing photons emanating from a different form of plastic square, allowing us new experiences in a markedly unreal world. Helen’s work examines our experiences, and asks questions about the nature of what it means to truly have experienced a place or a time. The places Helen has walked may not be said to truly exist in reality, but they can be experienced, recorded, and lent permanence via the medium of photography. We can experience these memories in the same way we did as children, accompanied by the hum and heat of the projector, watching the images of someone else’s life skitter past on a canvas made of light. — By Alex McHugh Slide Projection & Screen / 2015 — [email protected] [393] [393] Ke r r y Lo r ne I F e l l of f M y P i nk C l oud Wi t h a T hud I Fell off My Pink Cloud With A Thud explores the complex transition to adulthood and the resulting loss of idealism visualised as a series of images connected through the colour pink. Pink is complicated in its associated qualities: sweetness, fantasy, weakness, perfection and subversion. The colour is used to elevate and beautify the mundanity of everyday life, to evoke a sense of detachment to reality, to show a desire for a more meaningful and beautiful experience. However, the images do not eschew reality, the feather and the silk sheet are a cheap synthetic, and the surface of sanguine prettiness is easily penetrated. Reality, with its infinite complexities and dutiful needs cannot possibly match up with the individual’s solitary fantasy. This work is a product of its environment, semi-autobiographical with the intention of introducing introverted reverie to existential authenticity. A pink cloud is commonly used as an expression to describe the headspace of one who has lost touch with reality, whose emotions do not reflect their real situation. Sentiment, nostalgia and daydreams are a private bypass of an existence that can feel static and uninspiring, the progression of life happening in such fantastic and romantic ways experienced exclusively within the mind. The higher your pink cloud is, the harder you fall. Digital Inkjet Blue Back Prints / 2015 — [email protected] [771] [771] S a r a h O l ek s ik D e a d t o t h e Wor l d Sleep and death are completely different phases of human unconsciousness, while also being varied forms of the same fundamental thing. Up until the 20th century, scientists had little knowledge of what sleep was and why we need it, it was believed to be the result of lowered brain activity and the closest experience a living person has to death. Counterintuitively, research now shows that our brain is most active while we are sleeping, and without it our bodies and brains would eventually shut down completely and die. The need to fall asleep originates with the optic nerve, which sends signals to the brain with information that the day has turned to night, initiating melatonin secretion. Body temperature will then begin to drop and the subject starts to become tired and ready for sleep, all controlled by the body’s 24hour Circadian Rhythm. The production of Dead to the World has also been governed by this cycle. As the body’s temperature drops throughout the night, reaching its lowest point at 04:30am, this is the time when this work has been conducted. Dead to the World uses a thermal imaging camera to determine heat points in the body while sleeping to intrusively photograph subjects whose age spans from newborn to old age. All subjects are vulnerable while asleep and these images illustrate the living heat that exists within each of them at night. Infants and the elderly, whom we deem to be the most vulnerable to the possibility of not waking from sleep, are shown to have just as much life in them in the coldest part of the night as all the other subjects. Digital Inkjet Light Box Prints / 2015 — [email protected] [400] [400] R e be cca Pa rke r C airn S t one s On Thursday 23rd April 2015 at 1pm, a Skype discussion was held between writer, Rebecca Parker, and the graduating practitioners featured in this publication. The resulting story, Cairn Stones, was directly influenced by some of the themes and concerns voiced that day. On Wingletang Down there are forty-three Bronze Age off, a steadying hand from boat to land and back again, and cairns. That’s a lot of cairns for an island only a mile across. how something so in flux can feel so solid for the time it They say these stacks of stones may mark burial sites, or exists is always a mystery. they could be memorials, perhaps the apparatus for some ancient rite. I have to wonder if maybe something in the water here on the tiny tip of this great submerged mountain just… makes people want to pile stones on top of each No one knows for sure about the cairns. At least, no one other. willing to share knows about them. When you’re young there’s nothing there to see: just some old rocks coated Actually, the water here is scarce: there are no mains and in creeping lichen, lying still across the down. It doesn’t anything you get from a tap comes from the ground or the occur to you that rocks don’t stack themselves like that, sky. When you arrive they tell you this, because even the that someone must have put them that way: that someone, temporary islanders – the summer tourists with their tents having done it once, must have carried on and done it and crabbing lines – have to help. And we do. For two weeks another forty-two times. every summer we feel ourselves islanders, though we are poor imitations: never there for the cooling autumn mists, But no one builds forty-three cairns alone, and there’s the roaring sea days of winter. But still, we feel ourselves something on this island that compels us to pile stones on islanders when we’re here. We breathe out our daily selves top of each other, still. and breathe in someone else who only exists in this place, whose only sense of day and time comes with the sun and They call it Spooky Beach and, honestly, at first sight I do moon, someone who believes in things they don’t know to feel a shiver. The day is white-skies, rough waves, bare be true anywhere else. toes chilly in your sandals, but it isn’t the cool weather that makes my skin creep when we turn the corner on the The thing about this community: it changes, and it stays the coastal path. Cupped in a small sheltered bay is a beach, same. We arrive and we leave, welcomed back and waved bookended by two wind-breaking outcrops that make the [794] air stop still when you descend into the cove. It’s a stone When you walk between the pillars you see the islanders beach, no sand to be seen. that made them. There are the ones that go from big to “How do they do that?” small to smaller, neat as steeples. There are the ones that “Magic.” defy their nature, a marble supporting a monolith. “No, but really.” On the down there is an ancient well named for a saint no one has heard of. The islanders used to drop pins into it to “There’s always one.” summon storms that would wreck laden merchant ships and wash up precious cargo on the shores, because the We walk past Spooky Beach most days – in such a small islanders watch out for their own. The rules of Spooky Beach are: you never let anyone see you place, there are a finite number of paths to take and so we All over the beach, stone towers rise like stalagmites, building a tower, you never knock one over. The haunting is re-tread them constantly, like the seven rings of the old (Once a ship came all the way from Venice only to empty impossibly spindly, leaning at dangerous angles. When an endless collaboration between every pair of hands that stone maze. Today a boy from the campsite is amongst the itself of thousands of ceramic beads all over the bay, and you inspect them you find there is nothing holding them passes through, every respectful pair of feet that quietly stones. No one has told him the rules, but my friend’s dad still you can find one if you comb the sand of Beady Pool for together, just the perfect maths of balance that lets them leaves, and the protective landscape that crouches round. is about to. long enough, they say.) hold their positions, one on top of the other. The beach “What do you think you’re doing?” is covered in them, you can’t move for the eerie stone The island is protective of the stones and those who stack constructions, some tiny stacks of pebbles, others hip- them. high, of boulders as big as your head. And somehow you feel them watching you. Somehow Spooky Beach is always quiet and always empty of anyone but you and the stones. When you’re on the island, you can never say for sure that The year a wild storm like no other rips in from the Atlantic I know what I think he’s doing: swinging a cricket bat and hits us on the west coast, tears tents right from the around like King Arthur with his sword, slaying the towers ground and sends us all running to the prehistoric games left and right. My heart breaks for the stones as they crash room for shelter, our first thought is the well. and split. Destroyed before their time. “Who’s been feeding Warna?” “I wasn’t doing anything. They’re only rocks.” “Robin was kicking shells in yesterday!” I think: maybe the tide comes in and when it leaves again the rest of the world still exists. Phone signals drop to half a the towers are here. Maybe there’s something in the useless bar and north, east, south, west there is only water I feel very strongly that the boy does not understand this “He did I saw him!” particular formation of this beach that makes them happen, and water and water. The clouded night is deepest tar pit place. Anyone who really listens and looks knows that “No, that won’t do it; it has to be iron.” something about the way the water moves between the black, so dark you might as well be eyeless, and when the these are not only rocks. rocks that pushes them into these shapes and leaves them stars are out you really see them, so blistering white that “You might want to get back to your parents and start Robin is spared our wrath for the time being. While some sitting like this. you have to wonder: could they not be pinprick holes buttering them up before I have a chat with them tonight.” intrepid adults go on reconnaissance missions out into the “No, but really.” instead? Air holes in the jam jar lid of a child’s homemade “They’re only rocks!” night-black wind soup with their lantern torches swaying terrarium and we, small insect inhabitants, imagine “Well it takes one to know one, I suppose.” like the wreckers who used to brave the storms, we try I think: maybe it is magic. Maybe the stones themselves “I wasn’t! I didn’t!” enormous burning suns too far away to reach. want to be cairns, want to come together as a singular, tired to sleep beneath the pool table in our rain-dampened The boy skulks off and each of us starts work on a pyjamas. It feels like the safest place to be: two to a sleeping of being plural and banal. Maybe they only use us for their Strange island dichotomy: feeling both the smallest and consolatory offering. We can’t rebuild the towers that have bag, listening to the leaks. In the morning the carnage own ends, because we have hands and eyes and they don’t. the largest you can be, standing on the highest point with been lost: like felled trees, once dead they are dead. In is thorough. The day is given over to salvage: the real “No, but really –” less than a mile to the sea whichever direction you set off their place we can only plant new ones and leave them to islanders turn up with the tractor and tools and the broken in, staring into the expansive bigness of the sky. multiply. things are cleared, the undamaged tents re-erected. “Bit of a wild one, hey? We told you about the well.” [794] “It was Robin!” the world, it seems, are represented somewhere on these “It was not!” stones. The islanders know what needs to be done; they speak But in the end everything goes back to the sea. As the the island’s language and today they obligingly translate summer trickles on the stones disperse, find their way back for us. They live in houses built from stone that could take to the beach to tumble into the high tide and be rubbed the beating of a hundred nights like this, and those whose clean as the waves drag them along the sand again and mobile shelters have been lost are taken in (because the again and again, until the painted stones are just stones, islanders look out for their own, however temporary). until the stones are sand themselves. Being on the island brings out the latent creative in people. When you leave the island, you have to adjust. There is so Even those who spend their mainland days so far from much noise back on the mainland that just thinking can feel art it is nothing but a speck of dust on the horizon find like shouting to yourself, and your pulse, synchronised with themselves, once here, constructing driftwood sculptures the rhythm of the waves, has to quicken again to keep up at sunrise, playing improvised songs on long-unused with traffic. Your skin, that has become so toughened and guitars that swell and ebb along with the currents of the tanned by the sheer intensity of the elements, goes back to place. being tender and soft on the pollution-shielded mainland. Eyes that have become accustomed to the colours of One year, a holiday islander leaves behind them a legion of this pocket universe have to learn to see again through a painted stones. Whomever we ask, no one can remember different atmosphere, and some things that were beautiful their name. We fall on them with unbridled delight, there lose their Arcadian soul on re-entry to the world, like inspecting them, claiming them, trading them – those fairy food gone rotten outside that realm. painted rocks become currency that summer – ferrying them from place to place in long caravans of organised On Wingletang Down there are forty-three cairns, built by children bearing these precious treasures. Some are unknown islanders for unknown reasons, and the wind patterned, some have faces or landscape vignettes, some whistles high and primordial between them. On a southern are all white (like the coastal cairns they used to paint, to stone beach small new legacies creak, made by islanders shine like beacons in the dark). There’s a ladybird, a cloudy we might have known for a reason we can’t quite place, but sky, a moon and stars, fish, boats, flowers, flags, hearts. always from the same old stone. One has a single tiny handprint. The whole contents of Rebecca Parker is a writer and editor currently based north of the Scottish border. El iz ab et h F r a s er S ur fi ng t h e I nfi ni t e ‘Human beings it seems are the only bit of the universe we know about that talks about the universe. The only bit of the universe we know about that seeks to represent the universe and makes claims about truth telling.’1 In the last two decades we have developed the ability to ‘see’ deep space objects that were once unknown and invisible to the human eye. Today these images of space are easily accessible through an Internet search, saturating our view of the modern universe. The ideas that we gain from these online searches are already shaped by our expectations and desires and continue to formulate what we both expect and wish to know. Now that these images are heavily embedded in our consciousness, they have the ability to shape our impression of the universe. The mythology that lies behind our understanding of outer space is supported by photography’s ability to blur elements of fact and fiction together, to the extent to which the astounding and mystifying visions seen today become a familiar feature of our reality. Considering the power of the rendered Hubble Telescope images and the clash between visual aesthetics and scientific accuracy, Surfing the Infinite seeks to challenge photography’s credibility and status as a tool of factual objectivity by reconstructing popular representations of space through the photographic medium. Using experimental, intuitively playful processes and drawing upon a diverse range of practicalities, Surfing the Infinite attempts to imagine and recreate the invisible and bridge the gap between human experience and the still intangible and unknown universe in order to explore the innate subjectivity of reality. 1 Williams, Rowan. 2012. The Nature of Human Beings and The Question of There Ultimate Origin. Oxford Installation - Digital Inkjet & C-Type Prints, Book & Slide Projection / 2015 — [email protected] [872] [872] Jodie Everet t F a ct s of the Min d Within the natural biosphere, the more elaborate the biological structure, the higher the life form. For example: the structures through which the energies of a fish are inflected are massively more complex than that of an amoeba. The structuring patterns of animal conduct come pre-programmed within the inherited nervous system of the species, resulting in the fixed patterns of performance, which in turn creates incredible feats: the mathematical perfection of a spider’s web hanging delicately between two branches, or the incredulity of a tiny architectural marvel in the shape of a beehive or an anthill. All of them were produced according to the ingrained skills within the cells and nervous systems of the species. The distinguishing trait of humans however, is that the action-releasing mechanisms of the central nervous system are by and large ‘open’ and not ‘stereotyped’. Therefore the imprinting of the society the individual grows up within heavily influences the patterns of human conduct. The socially transmitted forms engraved upon the individuals nerves are imprinted during the ‘impressionable years’ of early to mid-childhood, and rituals have, throughout time and spanning cultures, been the recognized means of imprinting. ‘Myths are the mental supports of rites: rites, the physical enactments of myths.’1 Ritual gives form to human life. Throughout history, social occasions were ritually structured and the depth was rendered by an overarching religious tone. Today religious tone is reserved for ‘special’ occasions weddings or funerals, but within the patterns of our secular lives, ritual survives; not as a surface arrangement of time but as a deep subconscious longing. A contemporary ritual participated by the majority of us is the way in which we use photography in order to record and perpetuate our identities. As Everett increasingly matures and endeavors to question the restrictive patterns engraved upon her developing psyche within ‘the impressionable years’, by both society and primary attachment figures, she uses the ritual of photography to visualize the myths that have become the mental support during a time of transmutation. Referencing the visual language and symbolism of major religious practices, mainstream rejected cults of alchemy, magic and paganism, morally contemplative fantasy literature and the deeply spiritually entrenched symbolism of ancient cultures, Everett takes ownership of influential imagery and reconstitutes it in a range of playful visual experiments. Employing the use of body paints, the colours of precious metals and carefully chosen textiles to further echo the mythological enactments of archetypal rites that can give deep psychological expression and form to the internal experience of human life. 1 1 Campbell, Joseph. 2012. Myths to Live By Installation - Various Digital Inkjet Prints & Scultural Objects / 2015 — [email protected] [996] [996] C a l u mn N ew man C l ose Enoug h Everyone has that one thing, that one passion that liberates them from the daily constraints of modern life, something so integral that it feels like an extension of themselves. Finding myself bed-bound for three months with a broken tibia, the constraints of modern life intensified. Without an income I was forced to sell my bike and to this day I still remain bikeless. Instead of dwelling on negative thoughts, I chose to channel my frustration into a creative process. Close Enough uses the language of extreme sports photography, both still and moving, to playfully critique the exploitation of this seemingly simple relationship between a rider and the landscape they inhabit. HD Video / 2015 — [email protected] [398] [398] Kat ie Li onhear t Womyn I’ve been to a good number of art galleries in my life thus far and so I would roughly estimate the number of naked reclining ladies I have seen to be somewhere between ‘a gosh darn lot’ and ‘too fucking many’. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with a woman sitting still, undressed or otherwise, you understand – women, I can assure you, do sometimes sit or lie down, and sometimes they even take their clothes off – but once you realise that our environment is saturated with these two-dimensional women statically posed for the purpose of being passively observed, staring mildly into the middledistance, draped over cars like polishing rags, glorified clothes-horses for garments that I bet you anything won’t have functional pockets… it can get a bit much. Too often, it seems, pictures of women become still lifes. But a woman is not a bowl of fruit. I would say Womyn is a project based on a deceptively simple concept. To say it’s a project about movement or activity is to reduce it to the pop-up book it disguises itself as. In a society that constantly wants to reduce women to portable, consumable products, the act of photographing them can often be a form of literal objectification that secures in our minds the pervasive idea that the function of women’s bodies is their form. This is, of course, bullshit. Women’s bodies can do innumerable great things and, of all those things, looking nice for the camera is only one option. Having been privy to a good portion of this project’s conception and gestation I know that what it has always wanted to do is return life and movement to flattened images of women, to let them use their bodies even when they are only representations. Perhaps my favourite side effect of that, though, is how the book makes us interact with it for its purpose to be realised. There is no passive gazing involved in this project: everyone, subject and viewer, has to be moving. Energy must be expended for the work to have any meaning at all, and that essentially dissolves the rigid viewer/viewed relationship that we usually find in photography. Sometimes, seeing women perpetually represented in the media as ornamentation goes beyond disheartening into very real frustration. I have never in my life reclined on the bonnet of a sports car, nor posed beside a cervine creature in a picturesque glen (at least not to my recollection) – but I ran for a train just yesterday, and I dance when I’m home on my own, and I make things and do things constantly, every day. Womyn, I think, represents and creates the kind of joy we can only get from verbing, from the motion and utility of our bodies. Sadly, as inanimate objects, bowls of fruit can never feel this joy. But never mind about that. — By Rebecca Parker Handmade Book / 2015 — [email protected] [748] [748] [748] Lo u is e Up h a m F r a gm e nt e d Vi si on Vascular Dementia is a particular kind of memory loss. A healthy brain has the capability to remember things you have just done (short-term memory) but when the short-term memory section of the brain is starved of oxygen, it causes the synapses or brain cells to die, making it no longer possible to remember recent events that both practically and emotionally contextualize our lives in the present. By witnessing the difficulties my Grandmother Betty went through day to day whilst she was suffering with early stages of Vascular Dementia, I noticed that she lived in the past tense, sometimes just talking about the past, at other times believing she was in it. Subsequently, whenever her memory returned fleetingly, she became disorientated and frightened. In this project I wanted to visualise the internal fragmentation Betty experienced within her life, and used the external vision of her glasses to do so. These photographs have been set in and around my Grandmother’s home, as this is where she spent the last year of her life; only ever venturing as far as her clothesline outside her kitchen window. In the end, her home was the only place she felt safe. This project seeks to highlight the fact that without the confidence in ourselves and in our surroundings that our memories provide for us, we, as human beings, become fragmented facets of identity, which in turn, makes the human experience a deeply troubled one. Digital C-Type Metallic Prints (25mm Perspex Reverse) / 2015 — [email protected] [290] [290] Wat l in g a n d F o s t er M oon Ti m e A long time ago, women do as they do now – they held the joy and happiness; they held the sorrow and disappointments. After a time, the negative emotions and heartache that the women took upon themselves on behalf of their families would begin to weigh them down. The women would become sick and finally could no longer take the burdens of the family. Grandmother Ocean responded to the plight of the women, “If the women will come to me, I will wash their pain from them, but this won’t help the ones who are far away. Let me ask my sister, Grandmother Moon, if she can help.” So Grandmother Ocean spoke to her sister of the women’s plight. Grandmother Moon responded, “I am the power of the feminine. I will send into the women, my sisters, your waters carrying my power. Once every moon cycle, you shall come into the women through me and purify them.” And, she did this. So ever since then, every woman has a time in each moon cycle when she embodies the power of the moon and flows the cleansing of the ocean. We call this woman’s time of the moon, or moon-time.1 Watling and Foster have gone through a personal process of discovering the natural rhythms that occur in both women and nature. Moon Time explores the correlations between a woman’s menstrual cycle and the lunar cycle; both occurring monthly every 28 days. Each day for 28 days Watling and Foster created a single circular mud print created by sediment in the seawater. By establishing a routine determined by the time of each daily high tide, Watling and Foster waited for the tide to reach the point when the water would begin to retreat back towards the ocean and continue its cyclical rhythm. 1 Noble Wolf, Nicholas. 2001. Moon Time. Sacred Hoop Magazine Installation / 2015 — [email protected] [619] [619] Ł u k a s z Ku b icki A n I m a gi ne d S t at e i n Wh i c h Ev e r y t h i ng I s Pe r f e c t In the midst of black, a white sheen beckons, opening up notions of reality. An illusion takes place but shows us no gimmick, no tricks, merely different angles. As the white glow hits the texture of the material, a transformation begins. An angle morphs into a different angle, as it goes from process to process, forming a new structure. Each view takes a different journey, a different avenue and a different turn; there is never the same reaction. Some reactions plunge into the depths of black within the print edge, while others focus on the burnt out white edges of the photographic process. The material implies varied connotations that begin a process, a transformation that is slow, and at times bewildering. It does not immediately hit us nor does it sink in like a sponge, instead it dries and eventually forms a deeper manner of understanding—it is a process of neutral understanding. Although it suspends in the light, it does not aim to impress, nor does it attempt to put on a performance. It does not need to be eye catching, for ‘it’, is an idea. It starts at the beginning and can evolve with infinite possibility; the paper merely a starting point for further thought. As the idea blends and progresses in between the black pigment of the pages placed upon walls and publishing sheets, it leaves a permanent place to contemplate, to consider and to eventually form new ideas about the world around us. It is beyond aesthetic decisions; the aesthetic merely makes the thought process happen. It is a blank starting point to create and produce another idea. We start at the beginning. — By Alexander Norton Archival Digital Inkjet Prints (Unframed) / 2015 — [email protected] [813] [813] G e o r g ia Tay l or H ow t h e O t h e r L i v e s ‘People are frightened by what they don’t understand.’1 Throughout time, people have flocked to witness extraordinary zoological rarities and spectacles. How the Other Lives is an exploration of curiosity and discovery through interpretative performance art, delineating the communication barrier between human and animal. Through the creation of a fictional being, this work aims to address the absurdity of artificially evolving into another beast. How the Other Lives questions how vast the disparities really are between species. Animals living in manmade environments, adapt to surroundings that aren’t historically natural to them. This documented performance activity plays on situating a human, the artist, within adverse habitats, which immediately become strange and obscure. Natural materials and immersive focus attempt to add intrigue and ambiguity. A STORY A man is attacked by a wild creature unknown to him. The man pulls an animal guide book from his pocket and, locating the creature in question, begins to read out loud the descriptions and characteristics of the beast. As he does so the creature gradually changes. In the end it: a: looks identical to the man and disappears from view. b: c: looks identical to the man but eats him anyway.2 eats the man. 1 Merrick, John. 1980. The Elephant Man. 2 Harvey-Regan, Darren. 2010. Things That Refuse Themselves, Exile: A Living of Forest, ONCA Gallery HD Video Installation / 2015 — [email protected] [238] [238] Ja ck We ek es C ol our e d L a nd sc a p e s Sara Krajewski describes contemporary society as ‘an age where quickness and disposability are valued by so many’, an age where moments to ‘pause for reflection’1 become even more essential. Coloured Landscapes remains rooted within the digital space and explores the programmatic, autonomous, yet 000 159 227 subjective nature of digital imagery. Creating what, at first glance, seem to be flat monochromatic landscapes of colour, they reveal an ambiguous paradox— the human traces within a mechanical process. Even within this purely digital, seemingly mechanical process, human errors appear. As time within the piece progresses, drifts begin to form, numbers desynchronise; they begin to slow, showing the unique subjectivity formed from even the most autonomous of processes. The numbers feel arbitrary, counting to an inevitable end; an end that seems so distant, only again to return to zero at midnight. The speed of the changing images echo their disposability—the fleeting nature of the digital space. Over the course of 24 hours, 16,777,216 colours are displayed flashing every 5 milliseconds, never repeating, ever drifting to the inevitable end. Each group of seemingly unrelated numbers displayed represents a value for the intensity of red, green and blue within each given colour. These colours are the values that make digital display possible, turning imagery into data, adding layers and further subverting colour into arbitrarily coded numbers. Coloured Landscapes highlights how fundamentally unique any form of representation is and in doing so questions the authenticity of such a descriptive, yet by its very nature, deceptive medium. View online at: jackweekes.com/c-landscapes 1 255 159 227 Krajewski, Sara. 2015. Under construction. Foam. AV Installation & Online (Monitor & Projection, 24 Hours) / 2015 — [email protected] [000] [000] El l ie Pa ri s At L e a st We ’r e N ot I r i sh In a box hidden in the attic, fixed to the wall or displayed on the mantelpiece, every house has a collection of family photographs: endless visual reminders of past events. Inherited with these photographs are stories, memories preserved through images which form a continually fluctuating narrative of the family. This narrative is sometimes embellished or misheard by the teller and their audience, turning it into a never-ending game of Chinese Whispers. Subconsciously these stories shape the thoughts we have about past family members, allowing memories to live on in their wake. At Least We’re Not Irish is an exploration of the juxtaposition of everyday family memories with the underlying presence of darker secrets. Difficult topics such as shame and lying are investigated and intermixed with lighter anecdotes to suggest the often muddled structure of family life. The central thread of the work is the story of Kate Rose Patrick (my great-great grandmother) and how her actions impacted on the family. In 1896 Kate gave birth to Robert, out of wedlock. Unmarried and ostracised by her family she fashioned the married surname “Ross” from her middle name to conceal her secret. After her death a story continued to be told that she had run away to London from Dublin, giving her descendants Irish heritage. After tracing her through census records it became clear that this was another fabrication, she had actually been born in Kingston-on-Thames. On hearing the news that the story of the Irish runaway had been completely invented, her granddaughter said with a sigh of relief, “at least we’re not Irish”. Through the use of personal photographs and stories At Least We’re Not Irish encourages viewers to construct a series of characters from the anecdotes told, all of which have been collected together to assemble a study of an ongoing family narrative. Archival Digital Inkjet Prints (Unframed) / 2015 — [email protected] [212] [212] C e r r y s Wa k e fie ld D e sp ond e nc y of L i f e ‘Despondency’ – low spirits from loss of hope or courage. Depression affects 1 in 5 people at some point in their life. It causes a lack of energy, but sufferers may also struggle to sleep. There are many signs of depression, though some people fail to notice they are suffering until it is too late. It’s often the person you least suspect that is suffering the most. Despondency of Life represents the feelings of depression through the lens of a camera. The images of light coming through cracks are in all manner of colours representing the various feelings of those who suffer with depression. This series of images refers to the cliché of light shining through the darkness, which is often used to describe those who suffer from depression and other mental health issues. It shows that darkness is taking over yet hope still remains, represented by the presence of light. Digital C-Type Prints (Framed) / 2015 — [email protected] [731] [731] MADE TO STRAY ISBN: 978-1-909838-10-9 BA (Hons) Photographic Art 2015 Creative Director Peter Bobby Publisher: University of South Wales Design & Layout University of South Wales Jack Weekes Caerleon Campus Lodge Road Caerleon Assistants Calumn Newman, Kerry Lorne Newport NP18 3QT Consultants Matt White, Ian Mountjoy, Oliver Norcott Copyright © University of South Wales, 2015 All images © the artists & all texts © the authors Text Editors Ellie Paris, Jodie Everett, Katie Lionheart All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in Lithographic Printing any form or by any means without written permission from Taylor Brothers the publishers. 13 - 25 Wilder Street Bristol The authors have asserted their right to be identified as BS2 8PY the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Laser Printing University of South Wales Published in edition of 500 We would like to thank the following individuals and organisations for their support: Eileen Little, Magali Nouragade, Heather Birnie, Paul Cabuts, Richard John Smith, Jo Cashman, Matt Colquhoun, Geraint Cunnick, Valerie Davis, Peter Davey, Mark Durden, Gawain Barnard, Catherine Tarling, Dennis Lewis, Ian Llewelyn, Ian Mountjoy, Simon Regan, Darren Harvey-Regan, Russell Roberts, Helen Sear, Alex Vann, Stina Strangis, Tim Trimarco, Steve Neilson Taylor Brothers, The Abacus, Antalis UK, Bright Ideas, Hello Blue, ProMo-Cymru, Seren Fach Nursery, Pedal a Bike Away, University of South Wales June 2015 Writers: Katarina Heuser, Alex McHugh, Alexander Norton, Rebecca Parker, Reuben F. Tourettre Donators: Ren Ball, Steph Banasko, Heather Birnie, Rosie Blatchford, Matt Colquhoun, Frances Brewer, Kieran Cudlip, Emma Ann Daly, Simon Fenoulhet, Ahar Ford, Alex Fraser, Ian Fraser, Laura Goss, Litza Harford, Jon Glasbrook Griffiths, Monika Halas, Mary & Arthur Hills, Sinéad Houlihan, Katherine Ann Howard, Taylor Hurst, Helena C Jones, Anni Kruus, Sarah & Bill Lionheart, Julie & Tony Lorne, John Lorne, Rachel Lucas, Bethany Moor, Lottie Morris, Denise Myers, Bridie O’Connell, Aenne Pallasca, Rosalind & Michael Paris, Beka Prentice, Kimberly Sanders, Margaret Stansfield, Claire Swan, Jayne & Geoff Upham, Sarah Yourston, Mikolaj Adamus PHOTOGRAPHIC ART 2015 ISBN 978-1-909838-10-9